EDITOR'S CHOICE -- SCOTT SUTTELL

Cleveland-area wages show above-average improvement

Blog Entry: September 03, 2013 1:23 PM | Author: SCOTT SUTTELL

There's some surprising good data about Cleveland-area wages in this analysis at TheAtlanticCities.com by Prof. Richard Florida.

To chart where wages have grown the most during America's recovery, Prof. Florida's Martin Prosperity Institute colleague Charlotta Mellander ran the numbers on average change in wages and salaries for all 350-plus U.S. metros between 2009 and 2012 (the latest year available) based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Among large metro areas, Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor posted the seventh-largest increase in wages during that timeframe, rising to average wages of $45,310 in 2012 from $41,930 in 2009, an increase of $3,380, or 8.1%.

Topping the list was Washington, D.C., where average wages increased by $4,600, to $64,690 from $60,090.

Two other tech-driven knowledge metros, San Francisco and Seattle, take second and third place. Metros in and around the nation's Energy Belt also did particularly well, including Houston ($3,970), Oklahoma City ($3,460), and New Orleans ($3,230).

Prof. Florida writes that the inclusion in the top 10 of Cleveland, a Rust Belt metro, and Phoenix in the foreclosure-laden Sun Belt “suggests that the economy in these struggling regions of the country is starting to rebound, as workers in at least some of these cities have begun to see their wages rise.”

One caveat: “It's important to note that workers in Cleveland, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Providence, Houston and New Orleans were making far less to begin with, with wages in the $40,000s or below, compared to the $60,000 plus levels for the knowledge metros with the highest wages,” he writes.

Tough times

In the past 18 months, the credit ratings of several prestigious liberal arts colleges — including Oberlin College — have been downgraded or assigned a negative outlook by Moody's Investors Service, according to this story from InsideHigherEd.com.

“These are institutions — Haverford College, Morehouse College, Oberlin College and Wellesley College — that top students seek out, yet they are showing small but noticeable signs of fiscal stress several years after the end of the recession,” the website says.

“Their downgraded ratings are still better than those of plenty of other institutions, and Moody's has issued plenty of gloomy projects about colleges during the economic downturn,” according to InsideHigherEd.com. “But the recent actions are notable because they affect colleges that are by many measures — money, prestige, history — among the most fortunate in the country.”

Moody's “has pointed out the fiscal dangers of colleges relying on a small number of revenue streams,” InsideHigherEd.com says.

But that's not an easy issue to address, says Oberlin's vice president for finance, Ronald Watts.

“It's like a car dealership being sales-of-car dependent,” Mr. Watts tells the website. “I mean, it's our industry, what do you want us to do?”

Oberlin “got knocked by the ratings agency on Aug. 5 for faring poorly since the recession compared to some of its peers,” according to the story. “The college received a high-quality Aa2 grade but had its outlook changed to negative. Moody's said the institution, which borrowed $15 million in August and may borrow another $17 million this year, is increasingly leveraged and investing cash in capital projects.”

Mr. Watts tells InsideHigherEd.com that Oberlin grew its endowment by about $45 million in the 2013 budget year and is working to cut spending. But at $500 million to $700 million, the endowment remains smaller than the endowments of other colleges in Oberlin's peer group.

This and that

Data delivery: Bloomberg relies on a Hudson-based automotive research firm, Hedges & Co., to crunch some numbers on sales at Tesla, which is on pace to deliver 21,000 electric vehicles this year, though only about 12,700 have been delivered to date.

By sheer numbers, according to Hedges & Co., California “claims the crown as the land of Tesla,” as almost 5,000 Teslas were registered there in the first half of 2013.

By a density metric, though, Washington is the top state for Teslas. In the first half of the year, Washingtonians “registered one Tesla for every 100 passenger cars, according to Hedges & Co.,” Bloomberg says. Californians bought 107 other cars for every Tesla, with Washington D.C, Hawaii, and Oregon rounding out the top five list for Teslas.

The numbers, Bloomberg reminds readers, are “painfully small. While Tesla is aiming to produce about 5,000 cars every three months, U.S. buyers are snapping up almost 4 million new vehicles each quarter.”

So much for home field advantage: Since 2003, 10 NFL teams have played at least six season openers at home, and nine of them have won at least half those games.

Two of those teams — the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots — are perfect in their home season openers during the past decade, going 7-0 and 6-0, respectively, The Wall Street Journal says.

Care to guess which team is under .500?

“The Cleveland Browns have played nine Week 1 home games since 2003, the most in the NFL, but won just one of them,” according to The Journal.

The team opens at home on Sunday against the Miami Dolphins, so it has a chance to improve on the poor performance.

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